Coming in for a landing...

...Landing Craft Mechanized, Mark 8, LCM(8) that is.

Registry number 201,803.

I don't have the actual landing craft, of course.

But I do have its builder's plate. I don't know HOW I got its builder's plate - or more precisely, I don't know how its builder's plate ended up in a stack of junk I was clearing out of a locker on a boat I used to work on. It was in amongst some ancient (1970's) Penthouse mags and old net supply catalogs. Because the printed, er, literature, was already over 20 years old, this was the only thing I considered worthy of keeping.

For the initiated, Higgins was famous for manufacturing landing craft, brown-water navy vessels of all sort (i.e. for Vietnam), and, most famously - the PT boats of WWII. With perseverance, one could look up the history of LCM8 201,803 on the internet. I have chosen to delegate this historical exercise to someone (anyone) more dedicated to the task than I.

It's Fish Knife Friday #9

'nuff said.

There are some cultures...

...in which the transition from boyhood to manhood involves the receipt of a Selective Service card (a.k.a. a Draft Card). There are still other cultures in which this transition requires a young lad to go out and kill a lion.

With one of these:
This is a spear from the Massai (or Masai) people of what is today Kenya and Tanzania. Actually, the lion thing is on the wane since lions have become protected, although Maasai lion hunts are not prosecuted because of damage to their herds.

This spear is a three-part affair; one iron bladed end (shown below) and one iron pointed end connected in the middle with a 8" section of wood.

I would not want to mix it up with someone skillfully wielding one of these.

The Maasai culture is worth learning about - they eke out an existence in a remarkably difficult environment and thier way of life is threatened on many fronts. I don't agree in principle on some of thier practices (e.g. female circumcision), but by all accounts they are warm and friendly people. I'd love to visit some of them in person some day...

From the humblest beginnings...

...shown in the previous post, muzzleloading firearms arguably reached their highest point in the Kentucky Rifle:

These long, rifled barrel weapons were instrumental in the European colonization (some would say conquest) of North America. They fused the finest elements of American craftsmanship - gunsmithing, furniture making, silversmithing, blacksmithing, woodworking, etc.

This example appears to be modern (that is, made as a presentation piece in the 20th Century), but it has many of the elements that make Kentucky Rifles so collectible - figured maple stock, detailed carvings of game species, metal and ivory inlays, silver furniture, flintlock action, and precision workmanship that made these rifles some of the most accurate muzzleloading firearms ever made. It's nearly 6' long,

The image above shows some of the detail - note the little silver snake emanating from the front edge of the rear sight. This detail is not functional - it only reflects on the skills and eye of the maker and the taste of the owner. Sadly, this example appears to be unmarked - although I've not removed the barrel from the stock. This is sad, because this gun's maker has a lot to be proud of, assuming they are still around.

The humble beginnings...

of firearms technology looked a lot like this:

This is a fully functional, reproduction arquebus. The earliest hand-carried firearms were not much more than little cannons on sticks (or with hooks to attach to battlements). In terms of firepower, they offered little advantage to longbows in terms of distance, accuracy, and rate of fire and little advantage to crossbows in terms of accuracy and penetration power. Their value, however, was that they were cheaper to make and required much less training to use.

This example is very similar to those depicted on the walls of defensive castles in and around 1470, and has only two moving parts; a hinged flash pan cover to keep the priming charge more or less dry, and the "serpentine" - an early precursor to a mechanical trigger. The serpentine held a "match" which was basically vegetable twine soaked in saltpeter to encourage slow burning. The match was lit for the entire duration of the battle, or until the match was burnt. As you can imagine, the need to keep the match lit hampered foul weather operations, encircled the arquebusier in constant smoke and made his glowing match visible at night.

With all of the negative attributes of this sort of firearm, it's a wonder the technology ever advanced. Bert Hall gives an excellent account of the changing weapons and tactics in Renaissance Europe in his book Weapons & Warfare in Renaissance Europe. He makes the case that all of the challenges to firearms (hand held) use are obviated if the guns are used in a fortification/castle setting, where powder and matches could be kept dry, the slow process of muzzle-loading the guns could be done under cover, and less exposure of the shooter to enemy fire would be possible. Coupled with parallel changes mediated by gunpowder improvements and the increasing use of larger and more powerful cannons, this was just the advantage the technology needed to advance and become commonplace.

With a few years, handgun (meaning man-carried) technology advanced from arquebus through matchlock, wheellock, dog log, and flintlock, which remained on the scene for a few hundred years until percussion came along. For an interesting expose of the developments of this later period, track down the book The Flintlock: Its Origin and Development by Torsten Lenk. It's older, but worth a few bucks just for the illustrations alone.

Another 'hawk.

Tomahawk, that is. This one's not old, either. It's a Fort Turner 'hawk - full size and ready to throw. Not much more to say about it, except that if I ever needed a friend in the wilderness, this dude might be it.

It's in the bag.

This is an old WW1 tool/ammo bag. It's made out of canvas, and the stamp on the inside front flap says 1918. That's how old this sucker is - 90 years. It's sad that all WW1 veterans are now dead. Anything we now know about that war is now second hand. Soon, our memories of WW2 will be the same. If you have a veteran of any war in your family, please, please, please talk to them, document their stories, and record them for posterity...before you and they know, all that'll be left is the stuff they carried or wrote.

By the way, as I type this, the United States Army is banging away with some real heavy stuff over across the Chesapeake at their Aberdeen Proving Grounds. My drink is getting ripples from impact tremors like that glass of water in Jurassic Park every time they light something off. Should drive over to Betterton and see what gives...